This weekend, and by that I mean TOMORROW at 8am, my family are packing up and boogieing themselves to the Wisconsin Dells. I, matriarch of this clan, am to remain home to ostensibly make our house all better. I, matriarch of this clan, in fact DEMANDED that my husband take this trip. Away. With the children. Away. All 3 of them. All weekend. I’m serious. I’m booking it for you.

It was like that.

Kory was all, “Oh honey, you want to go too, don’t you?”

And when I stopped laughing I was like, “Uh, absolutely not.” As if I would pass up the opportunity for maybe up to 56 hours alone in my house. A few things I’m NOT dying to do? How about put on a bathing suit and flounce around in public. How about sleep on a hotel room bed. How about hours in the car with all the kids. Yeah, those things.

And then there’s the house. The big messy house. The house in which the cleanest room is Wyatt’s and that’s only because he’s only in there to sleep. The house in which there are so many piles of laundry (clean, dirty, mixed.. who the hell knows anymore. We’ve taken to sniffing everything) and toys and boxes and laundry and toys and just PILES AND PILES everywhere that some rooms, you’d have to guess what color the carpet is. YEAH, MOM, ITS THAT BAD.

The playroom not only has enough toys for 100 children, but it’s become a receptacle of everything that the person holding it doesn’t know where it really should go. Mostly that person is Peter. Who, when charged with cleaning, moves everything from the kitchen to the dining room and everything from the dining room to the living room and everything from the living room into the playroom. And also puts all the dishes in the wrong places and hides the garlic salt in a different place each time…….. but that’s a whole other bag of annoying. So, the playroom is chock full of crap. Toys, video games… but also old clothes, gardening supplies, power tools. I’m telling you that it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if when I move some piles out of that room I find that a dude named Bob was now living there.

“Bob“, I’d say, “How’d you get this tent set up in here without us knowing.”

“Who are you kidding?”, Bob would sneer. “You haven’t set foot in here since February.”

“You can’t stay here, Bob. It’s our playroom.”, I’d say.

“But I used the power saw to make a garden by the dollhouse and I planted strawberries!”

So, the PLAN is that I am going to clean the entire house while they are gone.

The PLAN is that in exchange for having 56 hours to myself, they are going to return to a house transformed.

The PLAN is that laundry will be eradicated. Wash. Dry. Fold. Put away.

That Goodwill will play heavily into PLAN. We always talk about taking all the kids clothes to Once Upon a Child and Kory likes to suggest we sell them on ebay or have a garage sale… BUT WHAT I’M SAYING IS, if we can’t be bothered to remove the strawberry plant and the drill from the playroom and I broke a mug in the bathroom this morning, because I’m apparently amassing a collection of them in there, I’m sure as hell not going to find the time/energy/desire to take pictures of things and post things and mail things and set up tables and AAAAAAAAACK! I need to accept my limitations and throwing all that shit into bags and driving it to Goodwill is where I top out. Dammit.

Sunday will be driving it all to Goodwill and maybe…maybe… starting on the garage.

And at night… well, at night after organizing and cleaning all day, the plan is to try to do the same to my brain. To my heart. To myself. Like my house, I’ve spent the last year just sort of existing. I have a lot of piles in my head. I have allowed good things to slip away. I’ve allowed bad things to get worse. I’ve allowed distance to happen. I’ve allowed myself to draw into a cocoon and little by little peel away all the people in my life that were difficult in some way…. I can’t even say I’m seeking peace or happiness so much as … ease. I just want simple. Simple doesn’t come easy to me.

If complicated people were a flame, I’d be one of those stupid flappy moths that bangs my head against them again and again. But, also like a moth, I’m pretty easily crumpled. And I think I just got tired of being crumpled. Decided that I’d rather be a moth that just hung out and watched Top Chef and drank wine. Screw those complicated people. That crumple me.

Anyway, I have a feeling that this mass removal of people is maybe not the healthiest thing I’ve ever done… and even if I can’t change it or end up just not changing it… I think it’s a really, really good idea for me to honestly take a look at it and really confess to myself why I’m doing it. When the motives for doing something are so deep that you don’t even tell yourself, that’s something to take note of.

Self, why’d you do that?

I dunno.

You do! You’re you and you did it, so you must know. Don’t lie to you.

Well, I can ask myself again, but I know myself pretty well and I’m probably still going to say I don’t know.

I look around and can’t help but try to inventory the people in my life.

I have a handful of people that are firmly in the boat with me…. a handful of people have jumped ship (or, if I’m being honest, in some cases I’ve shoved out of the ship)… and then this not small group of people that are just sort of floating in the water.

They aren’t here. They aren’t gone.

They aren’t my good friends anymore. They aren’t my mortal enemies.

They are in Friendship Limbo… the purgatory for the people whose email address is still in your contacts or whose number is still in your cell phone, even though you never talk or see them anymore. But the deletion of them… off email, off cellphone, off Facebook is so final that you can’t quite bring yourself to do it.

We might hold on to them out of nostalgia or out of obligation. So that if they DO call you some day, you won’t have to ask the dreaded question, “Who is this?” So if they get married or have a baby or die, maybe you will be told… because you don’t really know them anymore but you loved them once. You would care if they were hurt or gone. You would be happy for their joy if they found love or brought new lives into the world. You would offer them comfort if they needed it. You would help them if they asked for it. You would let bygones be bygones. You would.

Because maybe they post the occasional picture on Facebook and you can catch a glimpse of the person that you used to be close to and know that at least, they looked happy for that moment.

Because maybe some day they will change. Or you will change. Some day we won’t care anymore about what drove us apart or we will find a new connection that brings us back together in a way that is not the same, but better than before.

As much as I hate to consider the possibility… maybe, I’m getting what I deserve… these people on land… these people floating in the water… and me, in the boat, with my handful of people that I can’t bear to let go of… my handful of people that won’t LET me throw them from the boat, even when I try… and I do, sometimes… a fatal character flaw that makes me run and makes me shove. Makes me act like such a jerk that if you stay, if you don’t leave then I really, really know you are there and not leaving… no matter what. I am, admittedly, a complete pain in the ass.

………

Have you ever tried to pull someone back into a boat, when they’ve fallen (or yes, dammit, been pushed) out? Waterlogged, slippery, without a firm place to plant their feet and push.. they flail and splash and choke. Sometimes they just try to hold on to the side for as long as they can. Sometimes, they give up and swim away to land.

But sometimes, you grab onto their hands and pull with all your might and somehow they flop over the side into the boat and you both just whoop and drip and try to catch your breath and grin at each other…

Situation: The Toddler poops in her diaper, instead of on the potty. Then lies about it vehemently.

Reaction #1 – Kory: Ohhhhh, honey. Why didn’t you sit on the potty if sitting on the potty would give you beans? (Beans=M&Ms). It’s only logical that if you want beans, you have sit on the potty. Also, it doesn’t make sense to lie about it when we can all smell it. Do you understand Daddy? Let’s make a chart.

Reaction #2 – Kory’s parents : It’s fine! It’s fine! It’s not poop, it’s rainbow droppings! It’s angel mud! It’s fine and perfect that she pooped and she wasn’t lying so much as just telling a funny story about the angel mud in her diaper! PRECIOUS!

Reaction #3 – The Teen – Someone take her from me. Now.

Reaction #4 – My mother – Well, that is just about the most disappointing thing I’ve ever seen. All of my children were potty trained by the time they were 7 months old. Grandma could not be more disappointed in this terrible development than if you’ve held old people at gunpoint and stolen their social security checks.

Reaction #5 – Me. – If you say there is no poop, then I’m willing to believe that because I’ve frankly changed well over my limit of diapers today. Let me know when you want to acknowledge the non-poop in your diaper. Meanwhile, stand up-wind from me. The poop smell is interfering with the spit up smell on my shoulder.